Chapter 14. Server Administration

Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX is clearly an amazing piece of technology, but how does it compare with enterprise-level server applications? For a 1.0 release, Flash Communication Server stands up very well. It is truly scalable and secure, and it has a structure that stands up to the best, as you'll see.

This chapter provides a general walkthrough of the server administrator and how to expand the server. If you are an Internet service provider and want to offer shared hosting with Flash Communication Server, this chapter will be very important. Even if you are a developer who never plans to expand the server to multiple developers or tightly secure applications, you should review at least the section on the Application.xml file. This file allows you to override the server's general settings to manage bandwidth, streams, loading, and other low-level settings for particular applications. One great setting is the load-on-startup setting that will allow your application to create an instance whenever the server reboots.